


Gone but not forgotten

by MzMarbles



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, eulogy, it made Annie cry even if she denied it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 04:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6037435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MzMarbles/pseuds/MzMarbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I felt like Leo deserved a better eulogy than "you were the best friend I ever had" followed by "you too." So I wrote one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone but not forgotten

Obvious credit to Mr. Whitehouse who invented all of these fabulous characters. 

* * *

 

There hadn’t been time to say what really needed to be said. Both doors appeared and the two people who bore the burden of keeping him and the rest of the world safe were gone. Just like that. Instead of saying everything he had just cried like a petulant child, told them to go. Just go. And instead of facing his grief, he’d thrown a tantrum and nearly killed someone.

Leo deserved so much better.

Now, faced with the simple and utilitarian urn containing Leo’s ashes, there was time to say everything. It wouldn’t be the same. It was just a container full of dust, no different than a hoover bag full of vampire ash. Life had settled, somewhat. Not quite enough to travel all the way back to South-End to scatter the ashes, but Barry’s shore was as good as any other.

He had written the eulogy in a precise and practiced script. Not because he might forget what he wanted to say, but it was yet another way to keep busy. Idle hands…

Annie had insisted that she and Tom join him on his pre-dawn trek to Friar’s Point with a Thermos of tea and Eve swaddled and wrapped up against the early morning chill. 

The weather and the time of day meant that very few people would be about. The only other souls in sight were those on a tanker ship off on the distant horizon. It was a grey, damp morning, there wouldn’t even be a lure of a spectacular sunrise to entice anyone out to the point this morning. But at least the wind and water were calm.

At the end of the path, Hal delicately climbed partway down the rocky edge, putting a suitable distance between himself and his housemates. It didn’t matter if they could hear the eulogy or not, it wasn’t meant for their ears anyway. He sat on a rock outcrop and stared at the urn in his hands, at what was left of the best friend he ever had. 

“You too,” that was all he’d managed to get out and then Leo and Pearl walked out of their life with him and off to eternity together. Today he would do better.

“Five hundred years ago I sought to better myself. To rise above the miserable station I was born into. And instead I spent the majority of that time doing anything but. I was granted an eternity in which to do it, but I utterly failed to accomplish this one simple goal. I failed, time and again. I chose darkness and impulse and hunger, because it was easier. It was easier to believe that it was hopeless to try, to keep trying. It was even easier to forget all the hard work and inevitable failure once I’d given in. I had no one to answer to but myself. 

“There is no one on this earth who was less worthy of your kindness than me. I took advantage of your naivety and profited from your curse as I had done with so many others before you. I had no right to ask anything of you that night, I assumed I had taken everything already. And yet somehow you still had something to offer, something I still don’t think I deserve.

“You gave me such hope, Leo. And your endless patience. My existence and this world would be a very different place if not for your influence, determination and forgiveness. Rehabilitation doesn’t end with putting away the chair and taking the boards down from the windows. I have tried countless times throughout our friendship to take back every wrong, every slur, every cruel threat I uttered. The men I forced you to kill for my amusement! Jesus, Leo. How on earth you could have ever thought I could be saved or that I was worth saving is still beyond me. 

“What’s done cannot be undone. I live with my past everyday in close quarters with my demons. You taught me that it was what I did now and in the next moment that counted, that would earn your forgiveness. Some days it seems like I could live like this another fifty or a hundred more years and still not earn forgiveness for the things I have done.

“You are the yardstick by which I will continue to measure every success, every slip and every good day and bad day. Every friendship I don’t deserve, but will strive to earn. I have met too few people like you in my long life, and I have let too many of them slip away or I’ve pushed them away altogether, thinking them fools for trying. 

“Call me a fool then.”

He tore that paper seal around the cap with his thumbnail and unscrewed the lid. He stood and took a few more hesitant steps down the end of the rocky outcrop. A gentle breeze had picked up from the east. Hal tipped the urn and let the dust catch in the wind. Leo’s remains drifted and billowed over the rocks and sand and into the water below until there was nothing left. 

He pulled his coat around him a little tighter as the wind picked up and a gentle rain began to fall. He turned and made his way carefully back to the trail. Tom and Annie had wandered closer to the edge, closing the gap he had tried to build.

Tom poured a steaming cup of tea from the Thermos and handed it to Hal.

“Right good speech there, mate,” he said. “Leo woulda been touched, I think. And it made Annie cry too.”

Annie sniffled and smiled and put an arm around Hal’s shoulders, for once he didn’t flinch or try to escape. “Did not.” she said. 

Pearl and Leo. Annie and Tom. It wasn’t the same by a long shot, but it felt right, for now. Hal was foolishly hopeful and he smiled as they walked back to the car.

 


End file.
